1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 5)

Michael Smerklo: Don’t let the idea that your idea isn’t big enough prevent you from get going. See where it goes. I am in line with what you said, and I am so passionate about it. Even though my day job is as a venture capitalist, I say to entrepreneurs all the time that if they can avoid working with people like me and get your business going and bootstrap it and own a bigger chunk of it, do that. That is 90% of all the businesses of the world. 

Sramana Mitra: Yes, and VCs look to go $0 to $100 million in revenue in 5 to 7 years. That is hyper-growth. Hypergrowth is not a natural state of business.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There are three trends that I think have accelerated. People are at home and are working at home. Their whole social life has gone out of the window. There is more family time when you have the right conditions and so forth, but people also have a lot more time to think.

One of the phenomena out of this is people have started tinkering with doing a company on the side. They held on to their job, and they started thinking about starting a company on the side. In our program, we have a name for this. It’s called Bootstrapping with a Paycheck. We identified this phenomenon a while back and we started institutionalizing it.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I will tell you one thing that you may want to take note of. On the coast, there is also the kind of venture that you are looking for. They are capital-efficient ventures run by people who don’t want to play the unicorn game of flushing companies with capital. This came to be known as blitz scaling with capital. The philosophy that we espouse is being practiced on the coast as well. 

Michael Smerklo: It is great that you call that out. I had worked in Silicon Valley for 18 years. I was part of an operating team that ran a company there. I know the Valley well. It is a mentality that Next Coast Ventures is more interested in rather than a geographic limitation. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the companies that you have invested in the themes that are accelerating? What has been their journey? Give us a few examples.

Michael Smerklo: One of the examples on the healthcare side is a company called Everlywell in Austin, Texas. We invested in them four years ago. They do direct consumer lab testing. It was helping consumers with the massively frustrating situation of going to see a doctor and then the doctor tells you to get a lab test. You get the lab test, get some purple paper with results that your doctor doesn’t interpret with you, and you are left with a frustrating experience.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 1)

Michael Smerklo is Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures. We have a terrific conversation about a range of issues including solo founders and their ill-treatment by VCs.

Sramana Mitra: We are going to start today’s session with a conversation with Micheal Smerkio, co-founder and managing partner at Next Coast Ventures. Welcome back to the show. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Switching the line of questioning, what are you thinking in terms of how you want to play this fund? Are you looking for unicorns? Are you looking for strategic early exits? What is the analysis?

Alok Nandan: When we come in as investors, there are two guys in a garage most of the time. It is hard to predict if any of these startups will become a unicorn. We can’t base our strategy on companies becoming unicorns. Given our fund size and the number of bets we make, even if they get acquired for $100 million or so, that is a good return for us.

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Alternatives to Traditional Venture Capital with Bryce Roberts, Indie.vc

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Bryce Roberts.

Bryce Roberts, Co-founder and Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

>>>

316th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Bryce Roberts, OATV, Indie.vc

Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS